Come Holy Spirit!

"Whenever the Spirit intervenes, he leaves people astonished. He brings about events of amazing newness; he radically changes persons and history." ~Bl. John Paul II

I love the Holy Spirit! That seems like a pretty normal thing for a Christian to say, but truth be told, it wasn't long ago when I would have said, "Holy Spirit, Who?" Then slowly and patiently the Holy Spirit weaved His way into the muddled tapestry of my life. Soon I was talking to Him. Gasp! (As the kids say, "I know, right?") I was forging a relationship with the Spirit—I didn't even know Catholics did that kind of thing! Turns out, the Catholic Church is the oldest Pentecostal Church, the very roots of the Church are Pentecost.

Pentecost was an astonishing encounter with the power of the Holy Spirit that gave birth to the Church, empowering the apostles to go forward with boldness and confidence and bring others to that experience with the living Christ. How cool is that? And how cool is it that it is still happening today.... unceasingly!

People experience the Risen Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and as such they enter into a deep personal relationship with Jesus. That's so cool! That's what happened to me, but as on the day of Pentecost there was no "mighty wind", nor did I speak in tongues. It was just the constant soft gentle sound of His voice tenderly guiding me home, and as I began to listen and be open to the Spirit, joy began to take hold of my heart and a clarity of the gifts He had given me to build up the kingdom began to emerge. Soon the muddled tapestry began to take on form in the design God has planned for my life.

God has given me a transforming power in the power of the Holy Spirit, and He has given it to you too. Now it's up to us to call on the Spirit, to surrender to Him, to pray for the gifts, to rejoice in the fruits, and to allow the Spirit to lead us to a personal experience of Jesus' actions in our lives such that we respond to His will for us.

So today, I'm sitting down with "The Sound of His Voice" and I'm going to do my best to calm and quiet my soul and listen to the tender call of the voice of my Rabbi, and something tells me -in the depths of my heart- that with each moment spent with the Spirit another thread will find it's proper place in the tapestry of my life—a beautiful design that was planned for me since the moment I was conceived in the heart of the Father.

"Open yourselves to the gifts of the Spirit! Accept gratefully and obediently the charisms which the Spirit never ceases to bestow on us!" ~Bl. John Paul II